THE GODLY MAN 

A SERMON IN MEMORY OF THE 

3(o{m Pjtltp jHalleson. 

BY THE_. 

REV. JAMES MARTINEAU. 

Preached on Sunday, March 21, 1869, 
AT LITTLE PORTLAND STREET CHAPEL, LONDON. 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

% Jejjovi JHemmr 

BY HIS SON 

W. T. MALLESON. 



PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 

1870. 



LONDON : 

PRINTED BY WOODFALL, AND KINDER, 

MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C. 



205449 
'13 




THE GODLY MAN. 
— ♦ — 



" Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth." — Psalm xii. r. 




ITH many a bright child, many a high-minded 
youth, restive under Puritanical guardianship, 
it would seem, I fear, no bad news that " the godly " 
were ceasing ; and his suppressed feeling would be 
that they could very well be spared. For the phrase 
has become appropriated to a type of character far 
from lovely in even its best aspects, and so adverse 
to natural joy and dreary in its idea of perfectness 
as to repel all large and genial minds. It is the 
standing infatuation of divines, first to spoil the poetic 
depth of religion by reducing its speech to technical 
use, and then to charge on human corruption the 
repugnance which the dismal product excites. The 
kind of person to whom they would award the epithet 
"godly" is familiar to us all; — the man of evangelical 



4 



The Godly Man : 



piety, whose life is ruled by gratitude for unmerited 
salvation and desire to rescue others from the perdition 
which he has escaped ; who can glibly say the creeds 
without a pause of doubt, and is duly shocked with 
the superstition that adds anything to them or the 
heresy that takes anything away ; who looks on his 
Church as the great agency by which God is in 
contact with the world, and measures by its rule all 
men and things, all history, all life, all progress ; who 
pours his gifts into its treasury, and makes it the 
almoner of all his bounty. That a character of this 
form is compatible with many excellences, — nay, is even 
a pledge of them, — we need not deny : but the selection 
is narrow and peculiar ; it carries with it grave 
deformities and faults which it consecrates as sanctities ; 
and it omits, as if profane, many human characteristics 
which must for ever remain objects of admiration and 
trust. 

Even apart from its abuse in the religious dialect of 
a school, the word "godly" has come to mean some- 
thing vastly more limited and less certainly significant 
of nobleness, than it once denoted. It marks only one 
special aspect of character, — one order of feelings and 



A Sermon. 5 

habits, — viz., those which are directed towards God. 
No doubt these otigJit to carry in them all else that 
is pure and good, and to refine and perfect every 
other side of the moral nature. And wherever God 
is present to the thought as the everlasting life of 
beauty, truth, and goodness, and kindles their faint 
authority with the glow of personal affection, there, 
to live in conscious relations with Him will sustain 
the whole action of the soul at its highest, and be 
equivalent to righteousness all round ; and secret 
communion with Him will take the mind to the 
very well-spring of every better love, and revive the 
aspirations drooping in the heat and dust. A spirit 
always rightly disposed towards a perfect Being can 
neither be in disorder within itself, nor be wrongly 
disposed towards any other. But then religious 
susceptibility is often keen, where the conditions, 
intellectual or moral, of so manly and comprehensive 
a piety are wanting ; and a worship may be paid 
which sanctifies the discord of the passions and confirms 
the confusion of the conscience. And, on the other 
hand, there are secular forms of character, undeniably 
high and noble, which seem to have no sympathies 



6 The Godly Man : 

on the spiritual side, and are unconscious of light 
from above. It would be a monstrous and a monkish 
rule to measure men in our time by their devotions ; 
to admit to the glory of godliness every assured 
intimate of heaven, and exclude from it every one 
from whom the living presence of the Most High is 
hid. 

It may check this overbalance of our estimates on 
the side of piety to remember that the word "godly''' 
in its primitive intent, means only "godlike." It 
expresses, not the personal affections which have 
God for their object, but the characteristics which 
may bring a human soul into resemblance to Him, To 
the strong and simple builders of our speech, he was a 
godly man who drew their reverence, not whom they 
found constantly expressing his own ; with whom they 
felt themselves in the presence of something divine ; 
whom they trusted as a rock of righteousness ; to whose 
shelter they could fly in every storm of wrong. Such 
a one they would doubtless take to be " the Friend of 
God ;" but the sign of it to them was not in his 
devotions and private demeanour towards the world 
above ; rather in this, that he stood to them in the place 



A Sermon. 



7 



of God, and was the chosen Organ of eternal Right. 
If, with this clue, we seek for the central essence of the 
character, we shall certainly not rest with the pieties 
exercised in conscious worship. For precisely here it is 
that we stand on purely human ground, and are disposed 
of by affections which the Supreme Spirit cannot share. 
To look up, to aspire, to adore, to weep the tears of 
failure and breathe the sighs of hope, are the pathetic 
privilege of finite natures, planted on the open borders 
of the infinite. God lives without personal relations 
above Him : He has no prayers to say, no creed to 
repeat ; and the beauty of holiness in Him can have 
no fitting emblem in the uplifted eyes and patient 
looks of the true saint. Of His perfection we can 
think only as of a spontaneous conformity with an 
inward righteousness and a pure preference of the best ; 
as an inherent love of planting out the germs of this 
moral order in other minds ; as an ever-during sym- 
pathy with its growth there, bringing them nearer to 
Himself. If, then, Goodness, in its culmination, is 
something other than devotion to a higher nature, and 
is divested of its character of personal affection, 
how can I disown it as the Divine in miniature when 



8 



The Godly Man : 



it appears under the same aspect in a human mind ? 
If I see a man living out of an inner spring of 
inflexible Right and pliant Pity ; if he refuses the 
colour of the low world around him ; if his eye flashes 
with scorn at mean and impure things which are a 
jest to others ; if high examples of honour and self- 
sacrifice bring the flush of sympathy upon his cheek ; 
if in his sphere of rule he plainly obeys a trust 
instead of enforcing an arbitrary will, and in his 
sphere of service takes his yoke without a groan, 
and does his work with thought only that it be 
good ; I shall not pry into his closet or ask about 
his creed, but own him at once as the godly man. 
Godliness is the persistent living out an ideal 
preconception of the Right, the Beautiful, the Good. 
Wherever this is dominant it ensures 

I. A certain perfection and thoroughness of personal 
work. There are two ways in which all human 
achievements may be carried out, according as you 
elaborate them from within or from without. It is 
the boast of the practical man that he adapts his 
operations to the external conditions which shut him 
in, takes accurate measurement both of his exigencies 



A Sermon. 



9 



and of his possibilities, avails himself of opportunity and 
evades difficulty, and never permits himself to be run 
away with by impracticable aims ; and he perpetually 
confirms his opinion of his own adroitness by his 
visible success. Life, thus administered, is like a game 
of skill, in which every move is computed by balancing 
the values of surrounding contingencies, and making it 
an advance or a retreat according as there may be a 
better chance to win. On the other hand, it is the 
habit of a creative mind to spend its chief labour in 
the field of thought, to clear its designs, to fix its 
standard, to mature its projects there ; and not till 
then, except by an unconscious tact seldom absent 
from such a nature, to take account of the allies 
and foes encamped upon the outer plain ; and when 
baffled in the struggle, as it often is, to withdraw 
with quiet and abstracted look, unaware of the obtrusive 
laughter which proclaims the enthusiast's defeat. Life, 
thus administered, is like a poem or a meditation over- 
heard ; which finds a deeper meaning for what else were 
shallow noise, and haunts the world that is with the 
spectre of what ought to be. These opposite methods 
have no doubt, to a great extent, their separate spheres ; 



b 



The Godly Man : 



the one prevailing in works of adaptation and conve- 
nience, the other in works of genius. But neither can 
afford to dispense with the other : and, above all, there 
is no human function so purely mechanical, no task so 
poor and common, no drudgery so dry, as to admit of 
being performed at its best by manipulation and arith- 
metic, without a directing idea in the mind and zeal in 
the heart. Take this away, — let there be no image in 
the thought of the perfect product as it should ensue 
from the hand, — no sense of shame if it be inferior, no 
joy if it transcend ; and industry is bereft of its very 
soul, and in the selfish attempt to shirk its obligations, 
sinks into veritable slavery. Once measure your dili- 
gence by mere outward necessity, with no anxiety but 
to get passably to the other side of it, and the root of 
all dishonesty has struck within you, and will bear its 
fruit. If you build, the hidden stones will be rubble ; 
if you plead, your language will become suggestive of 
falsehood, and your ingenuity degenerate into tricks ; 
if you rule in public affairs, you will learn the arts 
of shiftiness and evasion, and will lapse into that shrink- 
ing from responsibility which is the modern form of 
treason to the State. The one security for personal 



A Sermon. 



u 



fidelity and effective achievement lies in the ascendant 
habit of working from within ; from the native love of 
order, beauty, right ; from faith in them as the master- 
ing powers of the outer world ; from reverent allegiance 
to them, which makes acquiescence in their defeat im- 
piety. As God eternally thinks out his universe into a 
perfection more divine, so does the godly, shaping the 
scene around him from the life within, turn it into a 
completer kosmos, as his time flows on. 

2. This godliness again it is, this inward stay upon 
the right and true, which gives authority over dependent 
natures, and most wins obedience, while most frugal and 
tranquil in demanding it. It is sometimes said, that the 
gift of command goes with strength of will ; and certain 
it is, that from weakness of will it passes entirely away. 
But it is little that can be effected in the affairs of men, 
and nothing in the higher departments of human life, by 
mere driving force of purpose, and intolerance of per- 
sonal defeat. It was never meant that in this world, or 
any other where responsible minds are found, the plea- 
sure of one should be the law for all ; and wherever that 
pretension is set up, we all turn rebels on the instant, 
and the push begins of will against will ; and, submit as 



I 2 



The Godly Man : 



we may, it is with protest, and keen watching to slip the 
tyranny. In the armed pleasure of one mind there is 
no natural authority over the unarmed of another ; and 
if the helpless yields, it will be as the captive, to work 
in chains, and plan revenge in tears. It is not stronger 
Will, but higher Right, that bears the title to rule in the 
societies of men ; and only he who visibly forgets himself, 
and becomes the organ of a law he did not make and 
cannot alter, whose will is firm because it is not his own, 
but is backed by a divine adamant that cannot yield, can 
win a loyal and glad obedience. He is not enforcing his 
personal preferences, but vindicating the just and good, 
which he at once embodies and obeys. This total retreat 
of self, this advance to the front of an august and invi- 
sible moral necessity, is the secret of that quiet dignity 
with which effective authority is invariably exercised. 
Rebuke itself acquires a solemn weight where it falls 
with impersonal gentleness, spoiled by no heats of flut- 
tered egotism, and tinged only with the sorrow of disap- 
pointed trust. Whoever lives out of any inward faith 
in good, is involuntarily disposed to presume it in others 
even while it is yet latent, and is the first to see it when 
its incipient expression comes ; and in dealing with them 



A Sermon. 13 

he addresses himself to it, and confides in the response. 
The very light of his eye kindles into life the spot on 
which it falls : he looks for the conscience, and it is there. 
All who come into his presence learn to feel that they 
have more than justice done to them ; that the best they 
have is seen in them, and the best they can is expected 
from them ; and under this warmth of appreciation every 
promise of good hastens its growth, opens into the upper 
air, and is nourished into strength. Yet, if they even 
fail, they know it is a part of the same faith which led 
him to expect the good, that he will make tender allow- 
ance for the ill, and not surrender the hope baffled for 
the moment, but true for ever. No induction of expe- 
rience, no life computed by the outward look of men and 
things, would ever attain this mingled authority and 
sweetness. They are the natural expression of that 
godliness which works out of an inward faith in beauty, 
truth, and good. 

3. The same principle carries with it a grace which 
at first view might seem to contradict the claim of 
natural authority over dependent natures ; — a certain 
deference towards others which refrains from self- 
assertion, and rather becomes receptive of their good. 



14 



The Godly Man : 



Where there is no deep faith in the spiritual bases 
of human life, in the revelation and the power of 
Right in the conscience of mankind, there is in the 
heart no certain source of " honour towards all men," 
no patient hope of future nobleness for them to soothe 
the disappointment at their unworthiness. Unsustained 
by moral trust and reverence, the gentle respect, the 
gracious amenities of life are left to rest only on the 
personal affections ; and scarcely go beyond the private 
circle, except when misfortune startles compassion and 
wakes the generosity which the sunshine sends to 
sleep. In how many a family may you see the most 
loving interior relations, the quick discernment of each 
other's good, the modest self-estimate, the mutual 
sacrifice of personal desire, the joy in opportunities 
of help ; yet, towards the outer circle of the world, 
a critical attitude from which every line of tenderness, 
nay, every look of justice, has disappeared ; the 
censorious talk, the malignant hint, the suspicious 
prophecy, the mean construction, the eager tale of 
some shame at which the heart might weep ! All this 
would seem to contradict the first impression of that 
gentle home. It is simply that the affections are 



A Sermon. 



near-sighted, and have no faith ; they are ready, clear 
and true, so far as their vision goes ; every soft light 
arrests them, every blossom of beauty charms them ; 
but where the distance lies beyond their organ and 
the mist closes round, they believe only in darkness 
and all that it may hide. They are unconscious of 
their strange illusion ; that in a world all human, a 
world which in its breadth does but repeat their little 
plot, they should see so much that is lovely at home, 
and believe in so much deformity abroad. God save 
us from the bitterness and scorn of the cynical spirit, 
by giving us the faith of the godly in the secret 
springs of good ! For him, in his intercourse with men, 
the presumption is always on the side of simplicity 
and rectitude ; he does not believe in knavery till his 
keen search has been pushed through all the title-deeds 
of good repute ; he recognizes a provisional claim in 
humanity itself, and allows his respect to enter into 
possession, until some fatal flaw compels to its retreat. 
As it is the theory of habitual distrust, the perpetual 
need of exceptional vigilance, that makes the City 
vulgar, so is it the natural ease of a pure and confiding 
mind which imports true refinement and composure 



16 The Godly Man: 

to the person in whom it dwells. Surrounded by 
those whom he respects, if not for what they are, 
for what they may be, he is drawn out towards them 
on the lines of genial appreciation ; he converses only 
with their good ; the egotism possible to us all sleeps 
and never stirs within him ; its insolence of thought, 
its rudeness of speech, its selfishness of act, are 
impossible to him ; and the dignified stability of a 
mind that lives from within is naturally clothed with 
the modest grace of reverence and charity. 

I have been irresistibly led into this line of thought 
by the fall from us, since last we were assembled here, 
of a dear and honoured friend who worshipped with 
us, while his strength remained, and will be remembered 
by us with affection till we follow him. Perhaps his 
own bright faith should forbid over his grave so 
desponding a prayer as " Help, Lord, for the godly 
man ceaseth ;" for doubtless the glorious succession of 
the faithful shall not fail : yet to us, who have to wave 
the last adieu, with sad rapidity, to one after another 
of the leaders and companions of our way, it may be 
forgiven if, for a moment, a tone of plaintiveness mingle 
with the tribute of our love. Beyond the natural grief 



A Sermon. 



17 



of parting, there is here, it is true, no accessory sorrow, 
but only the peaceful departure of a ripe soul and a 
completed life. Through an ever-widening circle, in the 
family, in the school, and in the church, our friend, 
during a long life, rendered more public than private 
by the largeness of his sympathies, was ever forming 
new ties, and leaving the impress of his character in 
new directions ; and I do not suppose that there is one 
among the generation he trained, or the associates he 
gathered, who will not cherish his memory as a precious 
legacy, and a guardian to him of whatever is honourable 
and good. Who, indeed, that knew him can deny that 
it is at once a high and winning character of which 
he leaves the image with us ? He had that rarest 
charm of courage, to live without an art or a pretence, 
and be transparently himself beneath the eye of God 
and man ; too strong and simple to hide his tender 
affections ; too deeply faithful to be ashamed of his 
sense of right ; too full of natural piety either to repress 
or to display his spirit of Christian reverence and sus- 
ceptibility to divine realities. His steadfast fidelity to 
every worthy attachment, whether old or fresh, has a 
long train of witnesses, from his earliest friends to his 



c 



1 8 The Godly Man, 

latest pupils. And with what ease his heart opened 
to the claims of an enlarging life, and met them with 
generous response, is known in countless places of 
hidden sorrow which he assuaged, and struggling life 
that he delighted to relieve. Farewell, dear and 
venerable friend ; and, while we linger here, may God 
confirm the bequest of thy pure graces to our hearts ! 




MEMOIR. 




HE Rev. John Philip Malleson, youngest son of 
Thomas and Mary Malleson, was born at Battersea 
on the nth of February, 1796. His father, of an old 
Cumberland family, was a silversmith in Sweeting's Rents, 
Cornhill, and afterwards a jeweller in Princes Street, 
Leicester Square. His mother was the third daughter of 
Frederick Gibson, a merchant of Cheapside, who was 
first cousin of the benevolent Joseph Paice, the friend 
and early benefactor of Charles Lamb. 

A few years after the birth of John Philip, the family 
moved from Battersea to 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where 
his mother, to add to their narrow means, opened a 
boarding and day school for girls. Here, under his 
mother's eye, he received his education, partly at home 
and partly at a day school in the neighbourhood, until 
he was fourteen, and was then, in the year 1810, placed 



20 



Memoir. 



under the care of the Rev. Thomas Bailey, at Hitchin, 
who was classical master at Wymondley College, in the 
neighbourhood, and prepared four or five lads for that 
institution. 

The day after he left home, for which he cherished 
always an intense love, he began a letter to his mother, 
and she, on the same day, one also to him, commencing 
thus a correspondence of the closest and most intimate 
kind, which continued without interruption until her death 
in 1823. To this correspondence he constantly refers in 
his letters as one of the greatest blessings of his life, 
and in it both the lightest things and the most serious 
are touched upon without reserve by minds that must 
have been singularly alike ; — indeed, at a later date, it 
became an expressed rule of the correspondence that all 
the truth should be told on each side. The likeness 
between them had been early a subject of observation, — 
since in one of her first letters his mother tells him — 
" Your Aunt Penelope says you are the only one of my 
children who possesses exactly my mind and inclination." 

His early letters paint the picture of a serious-minded 
boy (Alderman Goodbehave he used to be called by his 
brothers at home), very sensitive, loving, conscientious, and 



Memoir. 2 1 



studious, with delicate constitution and eyes far from 
strong, to which tears in spite of manful struggles rose 
but too readily, — at a school where the discipline was 
severe and games were evidently almost unknown. 

In his first letter on leaving home, begun August 14, 
1 8 10, he says " there was rather too much fixed air in my 
head, for I bottled my tears up as fast as I could, but 
now and then they burst forth ; " and goes on to describe 
the school life upon which he had just entered : — 

" We rise at six in the morning ; from that hour 
to eight we retire to read the Bible and to pray ; 
then family prayers, then breakfast, and, directly 
after breakfast, go in the study and fag at Latin. 
We leave it at twelve and take a walk till one ; we 
then dine. After dinner come up in the study and 
fag again ; have tea at five. We retire again for the 
purpose that I mentioned before." 

After praying his mother to fix a day to come to see 
him, as he is " not in good spirits at all," the letter ends 
with this : — 

" I made a bad mistake to-day ; he (Mr. Bailey) 
lent me last Sunday's paper to read ; I said I had 



22 



Memoir. 



read it on that day ; he said, ' What ! did you read a 
newspaper on a Sunday?' — They are very religious. 
Write soon and often." 

His mother's reply to this is very characteristic. After 
some motherly comfort and a promise to visit him the 
first week in October, and, indeed, to remove him from 
the school should a continued sedentary life produce a 
depression of spirits too great for his bodily strength, she 
adds : — 

" I think some people would smile at this letter 
and say, they would suppose you the spoiled child, 
and me the foolish mother. Remember the account 
I gave you of the manner in which Mr. Macmurdo 
spent his youth, and the comfort with which he is 
now surrounded. The age from fourteen to twenty, 
spent in proper discipline, seldom fails of producing 
excellence of character in manhood. This is the only 
trial you have yet met with, and I well know that 
the attachment to your parents makes you feel the 
present separation as such ; but when you have often 
travelled the distance, it will not appear to your 
imagination as it does now Tell me, 



Memoir. 



23 



if you have the use of any library, what books you 
are allowed to read. I should like to read them with 
you, and then we can make our remarks." 

And the postscript adds, with reference to his intention, 
already fixed, to enter the ministry, towards which this 
school was the first step : — 

" When I think of you as in a situation free from 
the temptations of the world, and as it were more 
under the immediate protection of the Almighty, 
you know not how much of comfort it gives to your 
mother's heart. Do not judge hastily." 

It is plain that to bring about " seriousness" was 
the aim of the school. In a very early letter he 
says : — " When you see me again, I suppose I shall 
be quite serious, for, if we laugh, we generally get 
a lecture from Mr. B." Nor was it only newspapers 
that were forbidden reading on Sunday, — 

" Prideaux' History of the Bible he (Mr. Bailey) 
would not let me read on the Sabbath, as not 
being pious enough, I suppose, so I took Hunter's 
Lectures. We only went to meeting twice yes- 
terday." 



2 4 



M cmoir. 



They usually went three times every Sunday, and in 
the evening had to write out the principal heads of 
the sermons they had heard and read them aloud. 
Every Saturday evening the boys held a prayer-meet- 
ing, of which he says, — 

" We all go up in one bedroom, and one of us 
reads a chapter and then prays, and the next 
Saturday night another." 

Occasionally, also, he had to compose sermons of 
his own. To one reader at Chelsea these were always 
most welcome. " Without flattery, I can say they 
exceeded my expectation," writes his mother, " and 
gave not a little pleasure to my heart ; but I kept my 
promise, and did not show or read them to any one." 

Under Mr. Bailey he remained two years, and although, 
he says, he must own the life was more serious than 
he liked, it is evident that he was not unhappy. 

His chief delights were his mother's weekly letter, 
which he calls the Chelsea Messenger, and her occasional 
brief visits. 

In January, 1S1 r, she writes to him, not yet fifteen, — 
" My dear and good John, — Your letter did 



Memoir. 



25 



indeed refresh my mind, and, as you wished, quite 
delighted me. You know I always endeavour myself 
to possess a right way of thinking, and wish my 
children to do the same. You and I have a little 
of the too tender feelings, so we must endeavour 
to strengthen them, yet consider them as a blessing ; 
for although it sometimes causes us to feel too 
acutely, yet as certainly it heightens our pleasure ; 
but, like all other terrestrial enjoyments, it requires 
the aids of moderation and religious hopes, that 
joys in the first feeling should not too much elate 
. us, and, in the second instance, that fears should 
not too much depress us. Now, I am not going 
to give you a sermon for the duties of the day, 
so will proceed to other matters." 

Her letters, in an upright, distinct, old-fashioned 
hand, were written in spare moments, a little one day 
and a little the next, between school hours and 
while waiting for the dinner-bell ; even in the school- 
room itself while music or dancing or ciphering 
are going on, so that the large sheet might be full 
by the usual post-day : and they bring out the 



d 



26 Memoir. 

long-ago life in the Chelsea home with great vivid- 
ness : — 

" Just come from our bee-hive," she says in one 
letter, " where I, the queen bee, have been very 
busy. Your rose-tree is in full beauty, and has 
many blooms and buds on it, and Chelsea is also 
in high beauty — everything so fresh and pretty ; and 
our apple-tree, that you used to admire, also in 
bloom." 

To another letter she adds the postscript, — 

" I cannot get any of the lady party to like 
Tasso. I remember the Psalm you mention." 
In another : — 

" Where do you think I am now writing, and 
have written all this serious matter ? — why, in the 
dancing-room ! I am now going to write to the 
tune of the hornpipe, which I think will make 
you smile." 
And presently, — 

" I am now writing to the tune of an Irish reel." 
The serious matter and the interruptions perpetually 
recur and relieve each other. 



Memoir. 



27 



" You know," she says, " that you and I relish 
a little grave discourse, so I treat myself to it 
now and then." 

And she treats herself with saying, — 

" How I should like to peep at your sketches 
of sermons ! Make one from my favourite text, 
Psalm lxxxiv., verse 11, — 'The Lord God is a Sun 
and a Shield, and no good thing will he withhold 
from those who walk uprightly.' " 

Or again, — 

" Last Sunday was the anniversary of my birthday, 
and I pleased myself with the idea that I was 
remembered by my dear John in his devotional 
hours." 

But before long comes a merry sentence on the 
other theme, — 

" I am writing this in my school-room, while 

the noisy Mr. N is informing his wise audience 

that two and three make five ; Fanny B is 

saying, 'I don't know how to do my sum;' and I 
have just been getting up, exalting my voice, and 
recommending a little more of quietness." 



28 



Memoir. 



Of him and his life and his letters the loving pious 
lady is continually thinking. After her first visit she 
writes : — 

" I can now exactly in my mind trace the employ- 
ment of your time, see you in your snug little 
study, and view you in the scene I used so much 
to admire, sitting round the breakfast-table with 
your Bibles in your hands, and think it would be a 

pretty picture for (the name is quite illegible), 

who so excels in domestic scenery." 

At Mr. Bailey's he had read much out of school 
hours, and in his letters tells his mother from time to 
time the books he is reading or has finished. For a 
boy under sixteen, the list is curious : — Watts's " Practical 
Religion, and Guide to Prayer," Hunter's "Lectures," 
Hannah Moore's " Sacred Dramas," Tasso (a favourite), 
Prideaux' " Connection of the History of the Old and 
New Testament," " Paradise Lost" (very much admired), 
Cowper's Poems, Hervey's " Meditations," Blair's " Lec- 
tures," "Plutarch's Lives," Park's "Travels," Dr. Mason's 
" Self-Knowledge," Josephus, Harris's " Hermes," and a 
" History of the American War." 



Memoir. 



29 



In August, 1812, when sixteen, he entered Wymondley 
House, near Hitchin ; at that time a well-known, 
pleasantly situated, Independent College, founded by Mr. 
Coward for the education of young men looking forward 
to be ministers of religion. The Rev. W. Parry was 
the Principal, and under him he remained five years, 
until he was one-and-twenty. There was more expan- 
sion and freedom in his life here than had been possible 
at Hitchin, and he enjoyed the change. He had a 
study to himself — occupied after him by the Rev. Thos. 
Binney — the largest in the house, and apart from 
the other studies. It had, however, " a very poor, 
small, rusty grate;" which, he tells his mother, is "a 
disgrace to the apartment, but quite the thing for 
saving coals." He joined a Book and Debating Society 
which met monthly at the Sun Inn, Hitchin, and to 
which not only students, but several inhabitants of 
Hitchin and the neighbourhood, belonged. He mentions 
cricketing and moonlight skating, and, when at home 
for the holidays, dancing, music, and the sprightly 
" click-clack " of conversation. It is evident that he 
began to find delight in congenial society, especially 
in that of refined women, such as he met at Chelsea ; 



3o 



Memoir. 



and to feel also the new pleasure of friendship with 
his fellow-students, the late Rev. Benjamin Carpenter 
and the Rev. Thomas Toller, who were his chief 
intimates at Wymondley, his companions in daily 
walks and studies, and who remained his friends for 
life. But his chief delights were still his books, his 
visits home, and the correspondence with his mother. 
The letters, however, were not all pleasure. His father's 
business did not prosper, so that his mother had to 
provide for all the expenses of the family, and year 
after year, money troubles weighed heavily upon the 
household. All her trials and tears, all her many plans 
and struggles, as well as every welcome little pleasure 
and comfort that brightened her daily life, were, at 
his earnest desire, faithfully told by the mother to her 
son. 

" I believe," she says, " that to toil and thrive 
not — at least, not in the extent to give me ease 
from pecuniary anxieties — is to be my lot through 
life ; otherwise, I bless God, I am very well." 

And in another letter : — 

" You know I love you so well that I cannot bear 
you to be unnecessarily anxious. It is consoling to 



M emoir. 3 1 

me to make you a sharer in my sorrows, but a great 
delight to make you a partaker in my comforts." 
It is touching to read with what a grateful heart 
she received back from her " beloved son," — as she was 
fond of calling him, — her young Minister, those simple 
lessons of trust in the goodness and love of God, and 
the wisdom of all His purposes, which she had so 
often impressed upon him. " Your letter was a cordial 
to your mother's heart," is one of her favourite expres- 
sions ; and he writes, " The wishes of a son's heart 
are prayers." So in October, 1 8 14, when eighteen 
years old, he sends her the following : — 

" Your fears that I shall not entertain the same 
high opinion I formerly had of my dear mother 
are perfectly groundless. In affliction you see a 
person's character in a different light ; in this light 
I have seen yours, and love it the more. Some 
of the good old divines say that you never can 
know your true character till it is tried and mani- 
fested by affliction. You may, my dearest mother, 
have found this to be, in some degree, your case. 
But humility is far from detracting from the 
Christian character — nay, it is one of its brightest 



1 



32 



M emoir. 



ornaments. In this view, then, affliction is not a 
little useful, if it teaches us our true character, 
and the necessity of unaffected prayer to the 
Divine Being, that we may exercise those contented 
feelings which are at once pleasing to God, and 
calculated to produce our own peace of mind. 
But I see that I am writing more for the pulpit 
than the post. However, these sentiments may not 
be unacceptable to you, since you yourself have 
in great measure instilled them in my heart." 

To this she answers : — 

" The cordial cup of religion presented to me 
by a heart so affectionate and so dear, did not 
fail of its effect, but had its due influence on me, 
and I think I have been better ever since." 

Full as their letters are of religious trust, there is a 
remarkable absence from them of theological and dog- 
matic discussion, or even expressions. What is obvious is 
a deep, living, cheering faith, which brightened both their 
lives. In another part of the letter last quoted he 
says : — 

" I sometimes think, while I have my book in 



Mi emoir. 



33 



my hand and my feet on the fender, there is not 
a happier fellow in the three kingdoms ; at others 
I think of home, and imagine that while I may 
be in perfect contentment, you may be in tears. 

But again I think that the same 

kind Providence which watches over me watches 
over you, and that it will never forsake the one or 
the other." 

And in the next of the series he writes : — 

" My days have as yet been but one continued 
sunshine — my only clouds my partings from those 
I so dearly love. My mother, I know, will feel 
unfeignedly thankful, that although she may have 
felt the sharp pang of affliction, yet that her children 
have hitherto been so happy." 

In August, 1 8 1 5, when nineteen years old, he preached 
for the first time in the College Chapel, before the 
Principal, tutors, and assembled students, and chose, 
for his " first text," the first verse of the twelfth 
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans : " I beseech you 
therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye 
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable 



e 



34 



M cmoir. 



unto God, which is your reasonable service." This 
" first essay to sermonize met," he tells his mother, 
" with approbation," which afforded him " considerable 
encouragement ;" and he now soon began to preach as 
" supply " to various congregations to whom he was 
recommended by Mr. Parry. 

For these early sermons his mother supplied him with a 
list of her favourite texts. The first is, Isaiah xxvi. 3, 
" Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is 
stayed on Thee." In another letter she says : — 

" Your path of life, my dear son, is that which, 
could I have chosen my sex and profession, I 
think I should have above all others chosen." 

And in her dreams her thoughts still run in the same 
direction : — ■ 

"A few nights ago I dreamed that I was at Wymond- 
ley, and that I heard you pray, and that the sensation 
of pleasure I felt caused the tears to flow plentifully. 
This awoke me, and at first I thought I could remember 
all that I had heard in vision, but it disappeared 
as a shadow, and the outlines only remained." 
On one occasion, in 1 8 16, he was appointed, as the most 
proficient student, to fill for a time a vacancy in the 



Memoir. 



35 



Classical Chair, caused by illness, but some of his fellow- 
students did not approve of one of their number being so 
raised above the rest, and the arrangement fell through. 

On the nth of February, 1 817, he was one-and-twenty, 
and his mother wrote as follows : — 

" This week, my beloved son, you attain your one- 
and-twentieth year. Infancy, childhood, and youth 
have with you passed as 'the vicissitudes of sweet 
seasons,' and you have been to me by your goodness 
and dutiful affection a subject only of rejoicing. I 
have lived to see you arrive at the age of manhood, 
and I feel all that maternal love can feel, but much 
more than I can express. I will not desire that your 
future happiness may be measured out by my wishes, 
but by the wisdom of your Heavenly Father, whose 
appointments are right ; and though I sometimes feel 
the cares of the world weighing me down, yet do I 
ever in gratitude acknowledge that my appointed 
riches have been those which I value most — the good- 
ness and affection of my children." 

To this he refers in his last letter from Wymondley, 
written April, 1 8 17 : — 



3<5 



M cmoir. 



" My dear mother, — Among the happiest hours of 
my life I reckon those which have been occupied in 
writing to you : again am I enjoying that pleasure, 
though experiencing a sort of feeling which I cannot 
well describe, excited by the anticipation of those 
changes of scene and manner of life which now from 
my age and circumstances I must expect to pass 
through. I could willingly consent to repass the last 
five years of my existence. I frequently call to mind 
an idea of yours in your letter after my last birthday, 
that you do not wish my future happiness to be 
measured out according to your wishes, but by the 
appointments of a Being much better and wiser than 
ourselves. I never think of this without perceiving 
that Hand which overrules and turns to our advan- 
tage all the uncertainties, perplexities, and the long 
catalogue of troubles which sum up and compose the 
appointed trials of human life. If this is preaching, I 
don't mind it, for 'tis only preaching before my dear 
mother." 

One of his fellow-students at Wymondley has since his 
death written as follows : — 



Memoir. 37 

" My recollections of him from the first of our 
acquaintance are all delightful. I marked then and 
admired his gentlemanly bearing, his cordiality and 
kindness of feeling, his particular attentions to me, 
entering as a stranger from the far north, not having 

enjoyed his previous advantages And 

I have not forgotten and never shall the hearty grasp 
of his hand, when weekly the students met for social 
prayer, in order that, if any offence had arisen, the 
memory of it in the presence of God might be oblit- 
erated I was deeply interested and 

impressed, on a special occasion, by an illustration 
of the influence of his character in the House, when 
a serious quarrel having arisen between two parties, 
his wise, kind, conciliatory interposition put an end 
to it at once, and restored harmony." 

From Wymondley he went in June, 18 17, at the age 
of one-and-twenty, to the little town of Wem, near 
Shrewsbury, in order to fill temporarily the Independent 
pulpit there, while it was yet uncertain whether he would 
have the option of going to the University of Glasgow, 
upon Dr. Williams's Foundation. 



38 



Memoir. 



It is curious that, being at this time for a day in 
Shrewsbury, he tells his mother that he did not obtain 
an introduction to Mr. Case, as he might otherwise have 
done, because his congregation seemed to have so great 
a dread of anything Unitarian. 

This little congregation of about 150 people, among 
whom the Walmsleys and the Irelands were his greatest 
friends, quickly came to feel for him so much admiration 
and regard, that when the offer of assistance at Glasgow, 
to the amount of ^40 a year, came to him from Dr. 
Williams's trustees, he was earnestly pressed to abandon 
further study, and to remain minister of the Wem Chapel. 
His means at this time were very narrow, and his affection 
for the Wem people very great, and he often referred in 
after life to the hard struggle he had at one-and-twenty 
to decide upon the right course. When he did decide, it 
was against the advice of many of his friends, but with 
his mother's full approbation. " You have chosen in 
wisdom to gather the honey in youth," she wrote, " and 
to prefer labour and exertion to the quiet comfort which 
belongeth more properly to the evening than the morning 
of life." 

He wrote for his children in Christmas, 1843, a short 



M cmoir. 



39 



account of this period of his life, from which the following 
is an extract : — 

"At this period I was discharging the duties of 
Dissenting Minister in the small and very quiet town 
of Wem, in Shropshire. My congregation was small, 
my duties not laborious, the country, bordering on 
Wales, very beautiful, the people very hospitable and 
friendly; and with a horse always at my service, a 
fine country to ride over, and every one of my small 
flock proud of and glad to see their minister, I had 
not much to wish otherwise, and was, as you may 
suppose, happy. I was so. I seldom think of Wem, 
its friendly faces, its homely fare, its quiet streets, 
and, above all, the solitary sermon-making walks I 
used to take along a river that meandered near it, as 
well as more distant rides through its bolder neigh- 
bourhood — I seldom think of any of these bygone 
days without the wish to see the good town again. 
And then there was an old queer-shaped chamber 
that I used to inhabit, at once my study and my 
bedroom. I see now the thick whitewashed beam 
that ran across the ceiling, and the little round oak 



4Q 



Memoir. 



table with its three legs, braced together near their 
extremities by horizontal bars ; and a square- 
bottomed, leather-covered chair, having one angle 
projecting, and a comfortably rounded mahogany 
back to lean against. The bed also of like fashion — 
four-post to be sure, but with an arched roofing and 
coarse-spun hanging of blue and white, and counter- 
pane of every pattern and every colour you can 
imagine, sewn together in some distant age when 
children or their mothers had surely less to do than 
they have at present. Such a room as this, so 
situated (for its only window looked out on a dull 
wall) and so furnished, I had never inhabited before, 
nor have I since ; yet sweet were the hours I passed 
there, and perfectly undisturbed my repose. The 
good people — they were of my congregation — would 
accept nothing for my board and lodging, and their 
good will and ever ready kindness smoothed over 
every little inconvenience, and makes me still re- 
member my little prophet's chamber with delight. 

"Well, this good town of Wem, and its simple- 
minded, kind-hearted people, I thought it best, after 
much and perplexing deliberation, to leave. I was 



Memoir. 



41 



young — too young, I thought — for the duties, always 
important, sometimes very delicate, of a Dissenting 
Minister. Besides, I believe I felt that the society 
of the place was not of a kind the most likely to 
improve me. It imparted but little information, and 
demanded from me but little mental exertion. So I 
determined — and at this time I see clearly and 
strongly how rightly I then determined — to put off 
for a while the gown of the minister, and to become 
again a person of no importance — a student at a 
Scotch University. 

" I showed your mother, a few years ago, the bench 
on the banks of the Severn — where it flows through 
the Quarry at Shrewsbury — seated on which I de- 
cided on this measure. That decision has determined 
all my subsequent history. It better fitted me for 
the duties of minister and teacher I have since had 
to discharge. It made me acquainted with several 
young men of industry, character, and talent, whose 
relatives are some of my present pupils ; and as I 
spent part of the long vacation in London, it also 
occasioned me to be invited to settle in London as 
minister of the chapel in Hanover Street, Long Acre, 



/ 



42 



Memoir. 



and this again occasioned my introduction to your 
mother." 

The rest of his little Christmas story related the 
journey by coach to Glasgow, and his assumption there of 
a scarlet gown, the student's dress. 

At Glasgow he remained for two sessions, from Nov., 
1 8 17, to April, 1 8 19, when he took his B.A. degree, 
and received in the same year, by the suffrages of his 
fellow-students, the first prize in Moral Philosophy, 
for which he had to compete by writing six essays. 
The prize was Hayley's " Life of Cowper," presented 
to him by Professor Mylne. A Latin essay of his, 
also, was one among eight selected for public mention 
from above a hundred, as doing great credit to their 
authors. 

The life at Glasgow suited him exactly : there were 
excellent lectures ; there was hard work and intellectual 
society ; Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Muir were preaching ; 
Kean came down to act Shakespeare ; Scott's " Tales 
of my Landlord" were coming out ; and he had intro- 
ductions to some pleasant family circles. The only 
drawback was the distance from home. His vacations 
he spent partly at Chelsea and partly at Wem, preaching 



Memoir. 43 

as "supply" for his friend Mr. Toller, who was now 

the minister of his former congregation. 

Writing in 181 8 to his mother, he thus runs over his 

past and present life : — - 

" I am always very much amused in comparing 

myself in different situations First, 

a school-boy, continually, when come home, sent 
from the parlour by an aunt, he then thought 
very plaguing, to wash his hands and comb his 
hair ; then a sort of half-and-half, known by the 
name of John Abstract (he was an absent-minded 
' lad, and this was his nickname), not to be sent 
to the cupboard for sugar, for he would be sure 
to break a decanter ; then a pertish sort of a 
student, thinking he would enlighten all his family, 
and ever showing his little knowledge by laughing 
at old-fashioned notions ; then a parson, low when- 
ever he thought of his wretched qualifications for 
the office, but very happy in the respect and 
attention of those who knew only the best traits 
of his character ; then again a collegian, 400 miles 
from a place he once thought it miserable to be 
separated thirty from, and here as a collegian 



44 



Memoir. 



sometimes doing penance in a class he cannot 
abide, at other times elated by the literary atmo- 
sphere he breathes and the literary men who notice 
him ; sometimes poring over Biblical criticism and 
ill-natured controversy till he is stupid and out of 
humour, and at other times smart and the gentleman 
— a lady's beau at a gay concert." 

At this time religious questions, in addition to his 
regular studies, occupied much of his thought. His 
mother was anxious that, during his long vacation in 
the summer of 1 8 1 8, he should preach as often as 
possible to Independent congregations, in and around 
London, and with this object was planning some appli- 
cations on his behalf. In March, 1818, he thus writes 
to her : — 

" Your schemes, my good mother, I fear, cannot 
be brought to bear. I can by no means, just now, 
guarantee to the rev. gentlemen you mention that 
I shall set forth just the very opinions they have 
thought right to entertain. I may, perhaps, be 
able to guarantee this by-and-by, but assuredly not 
just now. You may doubt whether such a guarantee 



Memoir. 



45 



would be expected. Were they to ask me to 
preach for them, the case would be different ; but 
were I to make a regular application to them, 
they of course would conclude that I should not 
apply unless I were such as they could recommend : 
now I am not quite sure, just now, whether this 
is to be the case. I do not wish you to imagine 
I am what is called a Unitarian, i.e., a disciple of 
Priestley or Mr. Belsham. I have considered their 
system, but it is built on much lower ideas of 
the inspiration of the New Testament writers than 
I entertain. I am just now very much inclined 
to the sentiments you will know best by the name 
of the old Presbyterian school ; but as I have not 
yet given a thorough investigation to the arguments 
adduced by Unitarians, I cannot just now tell among 

which party I am hereafter to be ranked 

These things occasionally give me a half-hour's 
head-ache, but I have the great satisfaction of 
doing what I know to be right, and the firm con- 
viction that this hard and disagreeable labour will 
issue in my good, and that when I do again 
resume the delightful employment of guiding the 



4 6 



Memoir. 



minds and moulding the hearts of those who may- 
be committed to my charge, I shall be better 
qualified, and not be distressed as I was before 
with the harassing question which continually 
occurred to my mind, whether I really was teaching 
the dictates and doctrines of Scripture, or merely 
the opinions which circumstances and education 
had forced upon me." 

In his mother's reply there is no trace of dismay 
at commencing heterodoxy, nor of disappointment at 
this opposition to her plans of forwarding his entrance 
into the profession for which he had been so long 
preparing. 

" I always augured," she tells him, " and wished 
you to be what, as you say, I know best by the 

title of Old Presbyterian But there 

are few of the class you admire, and whose sentiments 
would agree with your . own. I quite approve your 
wish of coming out on fixed principles, and not 
to be veering about like an ever-changing wind. 
At the same time, religion is of vast extent, and 
its duties and the trials of life, which alone can 



Memoir. 



47 



be properly improved and sustained by its principles, 
are subjects which I should think might safely 
be preached on, in any congregation, without giving 
offence to their peculiar tenets of belief, or doing 
any violence to your own. But on all this I 
think you a better judge than myself." 

His views became by degrees more decidedly Arian, 
and, after leaving Glasgow, he accepted in 1820 an 
invitation to become the minister of a small Presby- 
terian congregation meeting at Hanover Street Chapel, 
Long Acre, London. Although then small, the con- 
gregation had in past time been a considerable and 
wealthy one, numbering among its ministers Dr. Earle, 
Dr. Harris, and Mr. Worthington. 

Here he continued for two years, until, having 
commenced a series of sermons upon the Atonement, 
he, in the course of them, convinced himself of the 
truth of Unitarian opinions, and offered his resignation. 
The congregation were divided as to its acceptance, 
but it was accepted finally, and the chapel closed. 

He was now engaged to be married, and anxious 
for some remunerative employment. His friend, the 



48 Memoir. 

Rev. Dr. Hutton, with whom he became very intimate, 
was at this time the minister of Mill Hill Chapel at 
Leeds, and about to give up his day scholars. Of this 
opportunity he availed himself, and in the summer of 
1822 went to Leeds and commenced a day-school. 

At the same time he succeeded a Mr. Lucas as chap- 
lain to Mrs. Milnes of Fryston Hall (grandmother of 
the present Lord Houghton), at whose house he used 
every Sunday for some time to conduct divine service, 
until the family of Mrs. Milnes preferred attending the 
Church. 

On January 14th, 1823, he married Anna Sophia, 
daughter of Mr. William Taylor of London (who had 
been an influential member of the Hanover Street con- 
gregation), and granddaughter of the Rev. Henry Taylor, 
rector of Crawley, near Winchester, and vicar of Ports- 
mouth, author of the " Apology of Ben Mordecai," a 
work of liberal theology which attracted great attention 
in its day, and still retains an important place in the 
records of the Trinitarian Controversy. 

This was a year of great sorrow as well as of great 
joy. Four months after his marriage he received intelli- 
gence of the serious illness of his mother, whose health 



Memoir. 



49 



had for some years been failing, and before he could 
reach Chelsea she had passed away, at the age of sixty- 
four. She had, indeed, just lived to entrust, as it were, 
to another the " beloved son," the object of so much 
faith and pride, and so many prayers, — in whom she had 
found such solace, and with whom, in spite of distance, 
she had contrived (in the best sense of life) to live so 
much. 

There is a short account of their early married life, 
written years afterwards, in 185 1, for the children, by 
their mother, from which the following passages are 
taken : — 

"All your father's leisure time was now employed 
with me in house-hunting. We were not easily 
suited ; we could only afford a very reasonable 
rent ; we did not like a street in the town ; and 
we wished for a pretty-looking place. At last we 
found one nicely situated and pretty, but very small ; 
there were but seven rooms in it of any kind. We 
asked the advice of Mr. Darnton, our dear Leeds 
father, and he said, if it was large enough for our 
minds, it certainly was for our bodies ! So we took 



50 Memoir. 

it. Those who order a house to be furnished by an 

upholsterer do not know the pleasure it is to buy each 

piece one's self, to one's own taste, and of one's own 

choosing. We were quite attached to our goods ! 
****** 

" We now began a quiet industrious life, and in 
one respect my circumstances as a young wife were 
peculiarly happy ; I enjoyed much of my husband's 
society ; he was engaged in the school from nine 
o'clock to twelve, and from two till five : the rest of 
the day was his own." 

Then there are charming descriptions of little jaunts 
into the country — always a favourite mode of refreshment 
with them ; and in particular an account of a long- 
remembered delight, the first Musical Festival in York 
Minster, in September, 1823. 

The school flourished — indeed he had the pleasure of 
afterwards seeing several of his scholars among the fore- 
most men of their town and county — and some boarders 
were taken ; but after the conclusion of his engagement 
with Mrs. Milnes, it was by no means satisfactory to him 
to be without any work as a minister, and he was always 



M cnwir. 



51 



looking for some engagement of this kind. In the 
autumn of 1827 he was for some time at Bristol, preach- 
ing for the Rev. Dr. Carpenter, who was suffering from 
a severe illness, and here met for the first time the Rev. 
James Martineau, then a young man just from College, 
who had come from the same cause to take temporary 
charge of Dr. Carpenter's school. 

In 1829 he quitted Leeds, leaving behind him many 
whom to the end of his life he counted among his best 
friends, — how familiar to his lips were the names of the 
Luptons, the Luccocks, the Bucktons ! — and came, now 
with four little children, to Brighton. Here, as minister 
of the Unitarian Chapel in New Road, and master 
of the school at Hove House, in which he succeeded 
Dr. Morell, he passed the next one-and-thirty years of 
his life. 

A very heavy trial, however, — the deaths, within a few 
weeks of each other, of the eldest girl and eldest boy, — 
threw a deep gloom over the commencement of the new 
undertaking. Mary, named after her grandmother, died 
of a sudden fever, and John Philip was run over as he 
was crossing the road before the house, and lived only 
a few hours. For years it was an inexpressible pain, 



52 Memoir. 

even to parents so full of religious trust as they were, to 
have to pass almost daily by so fatal a spot. 

It was the ministry that had been his choice, and not 
the work of a schoolmaster, which was not so congenial to 
his tastes, yet in this latter he achieved a characteristic 
success ; for, being always ready to make friends of his 
boys, and to place a loving trust in them, it has probably 
fallen to the lot of few to be as much loved and respected 
as he was by successive generations of pupils. And his 
pupils once — were to him his pupils and friends always ; 
and on their part were not slow, as opportunity allowed in 
after life, to cultivate his friendship and seek his advice. 
Such relations between master and boy are now, it may 
be hoped, much more common, but they were certainly 
far from usual when he entered on the duties of school- 
keeping. 

Those were bright, long-ago days, when, walking-stick 
in hand, and with face full of enjoyment, he headed, 
with elastic step, on which years had not yet told, a 
company of his boys on an excursion over the smooth 
rolling downs to the Dyke ; or past Shoreham — where, 
perhaps, some of the elder boys would walk to breakfast 
— along the country roads, to the pretty village and 



Memoir. 



53 



old ruin of Bramber ; or, on occasion, to Hurst or 
Lewes ; and, in later times, by help of the railroad, 
as far as Arundel, with its finely placed castle and 
quiet little river, one of the most picturesque of Sussex 
towns. Many " old boys," now middle-aged or elderly 
men, will look back upon those excursions as among 
the brightest days still living in their memory of boyish 
times. 

Mention should also be made of— what many will 
remember — his school-room prayers and services. An 
audience of English school-boys is not one very easy 
to -impress ; but his prayers, by their simplicity, earnest- 
ness, and devotional feeling, and by their fitness to 
interest his pupils and remind them of their duties, 
did— in some instances certainly, and probably in many 
— produce a deep impression, and always tended to 
increase the feelings of reverence and trust with which 
his hearers regarded him. 

One of his assistant-masters, who was with him in 
185 1 and the three following years, and who has since 
become one of the principal assistant-masters at Christ's 
Hospital, thus records his impressions of him, and of 
the school : — 



54 Memoir. 

" His chief aim was to make his pupils upright 
and truthful, true to themselves, true to him, and 
true to all with whom they had to do. This he 
brought about by no sternness, but by a loving 
manner, which they repaid by a warm and lasting 
affection. Meanness and trickery, falsehood and 
deceit, were to him the causes of real pain. 

" In his school-work he was veiy earnest, doing 
with all his might whatever his hand found to do. 
He had no half methods of working himself, and 
urged others with a kind gentleness that was more 
effectual than severity. Yet, on occasion, he could 
be stern, especially where he thought one of his 
boys was making light of the labour of his life ; 
insisting firmly, yet withal kindly, himself setting 
a grand example of duty, truthfulness, and manly 
uprightness. The possession of these qualities, 
combined with great patience, well fitted him for 
the duties of a schoolmaster. In the course of 
instruction he pursued, he was in advance of most 
of his contemporaries, showing a decided appreciation 
of scientific studies, and helping these on by occa- 
sional series of lectures. 



Memoir. 55 

" With his masters, he was in the best sense a 
friend ; always willing to advise them, and, when 
he had the power, to help and advance them. To 
his first prompting and encouraging, I owed the 
idea of obtaining a University degree, which I 
subsequently successfully carried out. And when, 
years afterwards, he visited me in my school-room, 
and I told him that I looked upon him as a main 
cause of all the success I had had, and that I felt 
that he alone had taught me what I knew of 
the art of being a schoolmaster, he was much 
- affected. 

" These are no mere words of compliment to 
one no longer among us, but words that my heart 
repeats to me as often as his venerated name occurs 
to my memory." 

On three occasions his pupils presented him with valu- 
able testimonials — first when he left Leeds, then when he 
had been five-and-twenty years at Hove House, and again 
when he finally gave up his school and left Brighton. 

His position towards his less-educated neighbours, 
and towards the poor, in what used to be the separate 



5 6 Memoir. 

village of Hove, before the new town of Cliftonville 
united it to Brighton, was that of the one general 
friend, and, as far as his means permitted, the helper 
of all who wanted advice, or sympathy, or aid. It 
never occurred to any one in perplexity or trouble, 
that any difference of station or difference in religion 
could be a barrier between them and the always 
accessible, kindly, tender-hearted gentleman who kept 
the school in the large house. 

As a preacher he was simple, earnest, and impressive, 
rather than eloquent. He wrote his sermons with great 
care and elegance (as, indeed, he did the shortest letter), 
frequently, however, adding sentences and illustrations at 
the moment of delivery ; but the presence of an audience 
did not inspire him with a more rapid flow of thought and 
language ; — his passages of eloquence and his solemn, 
touching appeals came to him in the study rather than in 
the pulpit. His sermons were chiefly high-toned deeply- 
felt pleadings for morality, uprightness, purity, fidelity to 
truth, faith in God, and a religious view of life ; often 
they expressed indignation against any form of injustice 
or shade of self-righteousness — a fault particularly distaste- 
ful to him ; only occasionally were they doctrinal. Nor 



Memoir. 57 

did he hesitate to refer in his pulpit to public topics of 
importance, such as national education, the Papal aggres- 
sion panic, or election immoralities, by which he might 
point a moral or rouse to a sense of duty. 

Not in any sense a popular or fashionable preacher, he 
inspired his congregation with a trust in and a devotion to 
himself which gained him an influence that can rarely 
have been surpassed ; and although of necessity his 
onerous school-duties interfered much with the time he 
would otherwise gladly have bestowed upon ministerial 
work, his scanty leisure was always at the service of those 
in trouble of any sort, whom he could comfort or advise. 

He had a lofty idea of the calling of a minister, and his 
manner at the commencement of the service was distin- 
guished from that of every day by an elevated and some- 
times even stern-looking dignity, as of one who had 
important truths to teach and lessons to convey ; and this 
rendered even more striking those tender, loving passages 
of appeal which, going to the heart because they came 
from the heart, he used so often, towards the close of his 
sermons, to utter with difficulty because he felt them so 
much. 

Among men he was noted for his wide sympathy, 



h 



58 



M emoir. 



his faith in others, his readiness to heal disputes, his 
wise and gentle advice, his perfect toleration of differences, 
and his cheerful, serene spirit. His nearer friends will 
dwell lovingly on the remembrance of his constant 
self-forgetfulness, his inability to remember wrongs, his 
quick sympathy with everything good, and on that 
gentle tenderness of manner which, always characteristic, 
added an especial grace to his later years. One of his 
nephews and most trusted friends truly writes : — " He 
made us all better by his strong appreciation of what- 
ever was better about us." 

He used often to say that the fear of responsibility 
was one of the vices of the age ; and, although always 
diffident of his own powers, and dissatisfied with work 
that seemed excellent to others, he never permitted 
himself to shrink for an instant from undertaking any 
position or responsibility by which he thought he could 
do good. 

Few things roused him to more activity than any 
seeming tendency on the part of any of the Unitarian 
body to restrain or show disfavour to liberty of thought. 
He deeply valued for himself and encouraged in others 
the most unrestricted search after truth, and was always 



Memoir. 



59 



resolutely opposed to every attempt to bind the future 
by the creed of the present. 

By principle a Dissenter, an upholder of religious 
equality, and for years a subscriber to the Liberation 
Society, ready, moreover, when occasion offered, to defend 
vigorously his own theological and philosophical views, 
he was always glad to escape from the differences 
that separate mankind, and to sympathize with every- 
thing that unites them. In his six weeks' summer 
holiday, generally passed in the country, it was a 
delight to him to attend some village church, to lose 
himself in the congregation of his fellows, to feel at 
one with them, and laying to sleep the critical questioning 
spirit, to dwell on everything that he found beautiful 
and satisfactory in the service of the Church. 

It was the same in Roman Catholic cathedrals abroad, 
and would have been so in any chapel at home, of 
any or of no denomination ; unless, indeed, an exception 
must be made of the ultra-Calvinists, of whom he 
had seen much in early life, and from whose tenets he 
shrank with a feeling akin to dismay. He was peculiarly 
able to go out of himself, and to find a common ground 
of sympathy with all who were in earnest and sincere. 



6o Memoir. 



There was no trace of intolerance in his composition, 
nor had he any narrow standard by which to measure 
others. It might have been chosen for his epitaph that 
the charity which all praise he truly practised. 

In disposition he was retiring, and lacking also in 
self-confidence, so that he did not shine in general 
society as he did when some happy circumstance placed 
him among a circle of old friends whom he admired, 
and who admired him. Then his nature expanded 
as it were, and he became genial and inspirited to a 
delightful degree, beyond what was customary with him, 
except at his own fireside. 

Beautiful country, peaceful, sunlit scenery had a similar 
exhilarating effect upon his spirits, and as he used 
to stand with his hat just a trifle off his forehead, 
and his coat thrown a little back upon his shoulders, 
gazing at some Sussex or Surrey prospect, there is 
no doubt that he drank in the beauty with a natural 
keenness of delight and gratitude, which had grown 
with his growth ; and which had earned him, when 
quite a child, the pretty pet name of Master Ecstasy. 

He found great refreshment and stimulus, too, all 
his life, in the companionship of refined and thought- 



Memoir. 



6 1 



ful women, and also in that of the young people of 
both sexes who were naturally — as many were — attracted 
to him. To those who have joined his walks before 
breakfast, in the country, or at Hove along the foot- 
path by the Shoreham Road, there must have remained 
a sacred memory of the peaceful mental atmosphere, 
penetrated by sunny enjoyment, and thankfulness, and 
faith — felt, all of it, rather than talked about — which 
they were privileged to share. It was not a time of 
discussion, sometimes not much even was spoken, but 
the presence of a divine peace of mind, of a steadfast 
trust, made itself known, " so hallowed and so gracious 
was the time." A poem by Wordsworth — his favourite 
poet — read in the mood ; a quiet village, steeped in 
sunset light, seen with a heart open to the full impres- 
sion, might produce upon one's mind a similar effect. 

At length the double labour of teaching and preach- 
ing told upon his strength, and in i860 he was obliged 
to relinquish work and to retire to Croydon, where he 
had children and grandchildren about him. 

It was now too late for him to be what he had 
desired — a minister unfettered by a school ; he was 
forbidden by his medical adviser to preach, except very 



62 Memoir. 

occasionally, and was obliged to confine his religious 
ministrations, continued while strength permitted, to his 
own family. He continued active, as long as he was 
able, as one of Dr. Williams's trustees, — a position the 
duties of which he was earnestly pressed to undertake 
on his coming to live so near London, and in which 
he was much interested, as it was the trust by which 
he had himself benefited as a young man. 

One of the many valued letters received by his family 
after his death was written by an American friend, and 
relates to this latest period of his life. He writes : — 

" I last saw him as an invalid, seated by his 
window at Birdhurst, with an immortal light already 
shining upon his face. His every look was an 
argument for his faith, and his sweet tones of voice 
told of a spirit that had known the beatitude of 
the pure in heart. I have never met him but to 
feel raised to a completer trust in that substantial 
goodness which, as we grow older, we learn to value 
above any and all showy traits. And if he so im- 
pressed a comparative stranger like myself, in how 
many minds and characters, to whose formation he 



Memoir. 



63 



contributed, must he have left the traces which 
mark where a right and true man has passed in 
the world ! His was the only success worth living 
for." 

Gradually his health failed ; the brain had been over- 
taxed by the exertions of middle life, and it was of a 
form of disease of the brain, which left him to a happy 
extent in the possession of his faculties, that he died, 
on the 1 6th March, 1869, in his seventy-fourth year. 

He was buried at the Marylebone Cemetery, Finchley. 
On his gravestone are the two verses : — 

" SEfie ntrmorg of tije 3lust is blfssfU." 

"Being Seat), he get speafeetfj." 




Woodfall and Kinder, Pnnters, Milford Lane, Strand, London, W.C. 



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